Managing the Tensions of Essentialism: Purity and Impurity

This article proposes a new interpretation of Pierre Bourdieu, as a theorist of purity and impurity. Bourdieu’s writings indicate that through the adjudication of things or people as relatively impure or pure an image is constructed of their essential truth. Building from Bourdieu, we will show how themes of purity and impurity can be used to manage the tensions associated with attempts to impute an essence to human nature or to reality, ensuring that the moral and epistemological significance of complexity is masked. This is the reason why themes of purity and impurity so often attend polarized world views, and why they are frequently mobilized for justifying and operating biopolitical processes of social stratification and regulation

Morality, Colour, Bodies: Epistemological and Interpretive Questions of Purity

As contributors to this special edition show in different ways, purity itself is a less stable concept than may first appear. This insight, however, is not always reflected in dominant theory on the topic. Contributions to this special edition are therefore placed in dialogue with a metanarrative regarding the role of purity in Western history, presented by the influential Harvard sociologist Barrington Moore Jr.. In effect, discussion of Moore’s narrative on purity is a way to expose it differently, allowing the reader to reconsider Moore’s claims. In turn, we hope that the special issue’s contributions will be exposed differently in light of work to refine and redefine Moore’s overarching thesis

Schizoid Femininities and Interstitial Spaces: Childhood and Gender in Celine Sciamma’s <i>Tomboy</i> and P.J. Hogan’s <i>Peter Pan</i>

Childhood innocence has often been treated by scholars as an empty, idealised signifier. This article contests such accounts, arguing that innocence is best regarded as a powerfully unmarked training in heternormativity, alongside class and race norms. This claim will be demonstrated through attention to two recent films addressing childhood: Celine Sciamma’s Tomboy and P.J. Hogan’s Peter Pan. The films characterise young femininity as an ‘impossible space’, in which subjects face the contradictory, schizoid demands to simultaneously show both childhood innocence and heteronormative femininity – or else face the threat of a spoiled identity. The plot of each film traces how the protagonist attempts to manoeuvre in the face of and precisely using this contradiction. In dramatising such manoeuvring, the films reveal the surprising forms of subjectivity (e.g. the tomboy) that can be inhabited for a time in the interstices between age and gender norms, and which might have lasting value. Both films thus dramatise how an interstitial space can offer possibilities for negotiating the terms under which a subject is inserted into dominant, recognisable forms of subjectivity. This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Sage via https://doi.org/10.1177/039219211666699

Attachment and the archive: barriers and facilitators to the use of historical sociology as complementary developmental science

This article explores historical sociology as a complementary source of knowledge for scientific research, considering barriers and facilitators to this work through reflections on one project. This project began as a study of the emergence and reception of the infant disorganized attachment classification, introduced in the 1980s by Ainsworth’s student Mary Main, working with Judith Solomon. Elsewhere I have reported on the findings of collaborative work with attachment researchers, without giving full details of how this came about. Here, I will offer personal reflections arising from the process, and my work in what Hasok Chang has called history as “complementary science.

The Emergence of Sexualization as a Social Problem: 1981-2010

The article explores the history of how “sexualization” has come to be recognized as a social problem in the United States and Britain. It traces the “discursive coalition” which occurred between a number of conservative and feminist commentators, who for quite different reasons wished to justify measures to protect and regulate the practices of young women. A significant strand of feminist media narratives on sexualization have addressed young women as minors, threatened by contamination, and have proposed measures to regulate and nurture female sexuality and desire. In doing so, they have unintentionally offered support to right-wing discourses, which have used the issue to demand regulation of female sexuality and the dismantling of welfare state protections for adults. Underpinning this coalition has been an inadequate account of the sexual and commercial choice of young women, as either simply present or absent. In turn, this account has been organized by an image of young women themselves as either innocent or contaminated

‘I feel like a salesperson’: the effect of multiple-source care funding on the experiences and views of nursing home nurses in England

The difficulties faced in the recruitment and retention of nursing staff in nursing homes for older people are an international challenge. It is therefore essential that the causes of nurses' reluctance to work in these settings are determined. This paper considers the influence that multiple-source care funding issues have on nursing home nurses' experiences and views regarding the practice and appeal of the role. The methodology for this study was hermeneutic phenomenology. Thirteen nurses from seven nursing homes in the North East of England were interviewed in a sequence of up to five interviews and data were analysed using a literary analysis method. Findings indicate that participants are uncomfortable with the business aspects that funding issues bring to their role. The primary difficulties faced are: tensions between care issues and funding issues; challenges associated with 'selling beds'; and coping with self-funding residents' changing expectations of care. The findings of the study suggest that multiple-source care funding systems that operate in nursing homes for older people pose challenges to nursing home nurses. Some of these challenges may impact on their recruitment and retention

Filming disorganized attachment.

This paper critically explores the politics of screen media and knowledge in contemporary attachment theory. The article considers the role of film in shaping conceptualisations of attachment, focusing on how the influential ‘disorganised/disoriented attachment’ (D) classification of infant behaviour both emerged as a consequence of film technologies and has subsequently been mummified by the way these media have been interpreted. In this way, the paper will explore how tensions between the readability and unreadability of a child’s gesture on film have conventionally been dealt within attachment theory. It will also demonstrate how film theory can help psychology by offering more productive ways of addressing recordings of infant movement which suggest affective disjuncture or conflict. In the course of this exploration, John Bowlby and Gilles Deleuze/Felix Guattari will be discovered as strange allies in conceptualising primate infants as machines of movement and desire. Deleuzian film theory will be used to interrogate the concept of disorganised/disoriented attachment. It will then be used to reconsider the position of conflict between attachment and fear which has been conventionally situated by psychologists as the cause of disorganised/disoriented attachment behaviour.This research was made possible by a Medical Humanities New Investigator Award from the Wellcome Trust (Grant WT103343MA).This is the final version of the article. It first appeared from Oxford University Press via https://doi.org/10.1093/screen/hjw042

The Politics of Attachment: Lines of Flight with Bowlby, Deleuze and Guattari

Research on attachment is widely regarded in sociology and feminist scholarship as politically conservative – oriented by a concern to police families, pathologise mothers and emphasise psychological at the expense of socio-economic factors. These critiques have presented attachment theory as constructing biological imperatives to naturalise contingent, social demands. We propose that a more effective critique of the politically conservative uses of attachment theory is offered by engaging with the ‘attachment system’ at the level of ontology. In developing this argument we draw on Deleuze and Guattari, making use of the common language of ethology which links their ideas to that of attachment theory. The attachment system can and has been reified into an image of the infant returning to their caregiver as an image of familial sufficiency. This has offered ammunition for discourses and institutions which isolate women from health, social and political resources. Yet Deleuze and Guattari can help attachment theory and research be recognised as a powerful ally both for progressive politics, for reflection on the movement of human individuation, and for arguing for the meaningful resourcing of those who care for someone else.This research was funded by the Wellcome Trust Investigator Award, WT103343AIA, to Robbie Duschinsky.This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Sage Publications via http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/026327641560557

The Politics of Attachment: Lines of Flight with Bowlby, Deleuze and Guattari.

Research on attachment is widely regarded in sociology and feminist scholarship as politically conservative - oriented by a concern to police families, pathologize mothers and emphasize psychological at the expense of socio-economic factors. These critiques have presented attachment theory as constructing biological imperatives to naturalize contingent, social demands. We propose that a more effective critique of the politically conservative uses of attachment theory is offered by engaging with the 'attachment system' at the level of ontology. In developing this argument we draw on Deleuze and Guattari, making use of the common language of ethology which links their ideas to that of attachment theory. The attachment system can and has been reified into an image of the infant returning to their caregiver as an image of familial sufficiency. This has offered ammunition for discourses and institutions which isolate women from health, social and political resources. Yet Deleuze and Guattari can help attachment theory and research to be recognized as a powerful ally for progressive politics, for reflection on the movement of human individuation, and for arguing for the meaningful resourcing of those who care for someone else.This research was funded by the Wellcome Trust Investigator Award, WT103343AIA, to Robbie Duschinsky.This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Sage Publications via http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/026327641560557